How can I set conditional formatting to check for equality between columns?

Question

I have a dataset like this in Excel:

  A  B
1 X  X
2 X  Y
3 Y  X
4 Y  Y

I want to set up conditional formatting such that rows 1 and 4 will be highlighted as green because their A and B cells are the same. The same formatting should highlight rows 2 and 3 red because their A and B cells are different.

How can I do that?

I know I can create a new column using the formula A1=B1 to generate TRUE or FALSE, then use the new column for highlighting, but I don't want to do an extra step.

Answer 1

I think a picture is worth several words here. Use the formula you mentioned, and its opposite, for the conditional formatting formulas.